Michael Moore’s ‘Sicko’ details U.S. healthcare failures

Editor’s note: This article is an examination of issues surrounding Moore’s new film, “Sicko.” It is not a review. Details have been drawn from media accounts based on pre-release screenings.

At first glance, a documentary about the dismal state of health care in the United States might not be expected to generate much buzz. Policy issues, like the plight of the uninsured and underinsured, don’t typically make for a very “sexy” movie.

But when the filmmaker is Michael Moore, and when the U.S. government goes out of its way to attack and potentially

Many workers at Ground Zero suffer severe respiratory illnesses with little hope for adequate health care.

even censor footage from the movie, all bets are off. Although “Sicko,” Moore’s latest offering, has a June 29 U.S. release date, it has already generated tremendous publicity across the country.

The film examines the disastrous consequences of the profit-driven U.S. healthcare system.

In it, a carpenter contemplates paying $60,000 to have just one of his two cut-off fingers reattached. A hospital puts disoriented outpatients into cabs and dumps them near a homeless facility when their insurance runs out. A couple with insurance through a Health Maintenance Organization (HMO) cannot cope with medical bills and is forced to sell their home.

Moore also examines the ties between the capitalists who reap huge profits under the current system and the country’s big politicians, like Hillary Clinton.

The aspect of the film that has drawn the most attention is Moore’s attempt to get medical care for a group of workers who were poisoned by the toxic atmosphere at Ground Zero, the site of the World Trade Center in New York City. Although seemingly every politician took the opportunity to praise them as heroes, these workers were unable to access adequate health care to treat their conditions.

In a bold move loaded with irony, Moore decides to take these Ground Zero workers to Guantanamo, where he has heard the prisoners receive free health care treatment. Moore and company approach the prison facility in a boat, but are turned away.

So, they proceed to Havana, where they receive the same free treatment that every citizen does in socialist Cuba. As a result of that trip to Cuba, Moore received a letter from the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, indicating that it was conducting a civil investigation about possible violations of the U.S. restrictions on travel to Cuba.

“Sicko,” like his earlier documentary “Fahrenheit 9/11,” was selected as an official entry for the prestigious Cannes film

Healthcare is free and available to all under Cuba’s socialist system.

festival. It had its world premiere there on May 19, where it was very well received. The film is expected to make a major splash when it appears in the United States at the end of June.

Moore’s films provide powerful social commentary largely excluded from the corporate media discourse. For that, they are valuable. But his politics are not revolutionary. The solutions he proposes rarely fall outside the realm of liberal sectors of the Democratic Party.

In 2004, despite his critique of the Bush administration’s decision to go to war, Moore rallied support for the presidential campaign of John Kerry, a pro-war candidate who promised a troop surge as one of his major policy initiatives. Moore promotes needed reforms, but never addresses the fact that the overwhelming problems he skillfully documents are inherent to capitalism.

Still, “Sicko” likely will be a popular and controversial film. It may inspire many to look into and oppose the criminal U.S. blockade on Cuba and to question the overwhelming bourgeois propaganda maligning its socialist gains. Above all, the film could encourage large numbers of people to examine the critical flaws in the U.S. profit-driven healthcare system.

Click here to read PSL’s review of Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11.”